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Why nominate if the Senate won’t confirm? In other words, if the Senate makes it clear that they will only confirm, say, 200 of the 250 you nominate, then why waste time nominating 250? Nominate 200 and get them passed. Of course that will produce an artifical ‘success rate’ of 100% at confirmation (everyone nominated gets confirmed), but it’s only artifical.

Why not nominate those who won’t be confirmed? I would imagine its rather disruptive to one’s life to be offered a high ranking job only to never actually be able to take the job for no particular reason. Not something you’d want to do to someone you consider a friend.

Suppose a batter is told by a fortune teller (whose 100% accurate all the time) that he will only get two hits in a game. After his second hit should he swing ever again? No, he could still hope for a walk but swinging will accomplish nothing but strikes and outs.

But unlike a batter, it does cost something to nominate a trusted ally to something only to see him fail in confirmation for no good reason. You’ve caused a lot of disruption to his life so if confronting a Senate that is playing games with confirmation, it may make sense to just not nominate in areas where you know the Senate won’t accept anyone you pick but to nominate in areas where there’s a chance.

It is customary in the Senate to defer to the state’s senator when it comes to nominations. In other words, if the state’s senator says no to a person, the rest of the Senate won’t even bother on voting for that nominee. So if the Republicans are on a kick to refuse to confirm anyone appointed by Obama, it would be rational for Obama to not bother nominating whenever there’s an opening under a state w/Republican Senators.

I see, the problem is that Clinton and Bush were callous. They nominated more and had more judges confirmed, with roughly the same confirmation rate.

Not quite, your assuming the confirmation rate is a valid way to measure how friendly a Senate is to a President’s nominations. But consider if a President is not inclined to nominate when he thinks there’s good reason to believe the Senate won’t confirm, then the proper measure is in fact the *nomination rate*. Clinton and Bush had higher nomination rates because they had a friendlier congress which meant that they would nominate more because they weren’t wasting everyone’s time by nominating.

A Congress, though, that makes it clear they won’t confirm anyone nominated (or won’t confirm a large number of those nominated) will ensure a lower nomination rate. But of those nominated, the confirmation rate may be equal too or higher than previous administrations.

Put it another way, imagine a Senate asserted that they would only confirm 1 person nominated per year by the President no matter what and made it clear that’s how they were going to do business. The President only bothers to nominate 1 person per year. Would it be fair to say his success rate was 100% and the piling up vacancies were not due to an unfriendly Congress?

Just a President who can’t be bothered to come to bat.

that would be inconsistent with the President doing as many recess appointments as he could. If you just had a lazy President who didn’t want to do the work of finding people to nominate, well recess appointments take as much work, if not more.